Critical Essay by Paula R. Backscheider

SOURCE: Backscheider, Paula R. “Gothic Drama and National Crisis.” In Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England, pp. 149-88. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Backsheider maintains that the enormous popularity of Gothic drama can be accounted for by its ability to reproduce and contain the cultural anxieties that accompanied the era's political and social unrest.

Gothic drama reached its creative and popular peak at a time when a number of political orders were being renegotiated and being complicated by almost unprecedented national and international crises. A few of the major events of the last quarter of the eighteenth century were the American Revolution, the Gordon Riots, the Regency Crisis, the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars. In addition, Britain...